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As someone who completed a PhD in organometallic chemistry in the late 1960s, I was immediately drawn to your interview with Omar Yaghi about metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). One time I was leading a curriculum development project in which pupils aged 14 to 15 were required to design, but not make, products and services they considered …

Regarding the sci-fi stories inspired by the "Blueprint Problem" that Annalee Newitz decries because of their preference for placing human beings at the centre of the story rather than robotic spacecraft: I have found that the sci-fi stories that made the biggest impact on me were those that asked the question: "How would I have …

The growing recognition that the human body functions as an integrated, communicative whole, rather than a collection of isolated organs, is a welcome and important development. This systems-level view helps explain why ageing and disease are often body-wide phenomena. What is especially striking is how much remains unresolved. This should encourage intellectual humility as well …

Michael Marshall speculates about how seafaring was learned. Could it have developed incrementally as rising water levels turned a society's accustomed range into a series of islands (where once there were hills), with the gaps between them developing from dry land to a swamp to a small waterway to a larger waterway and then finally …

Marshall presents an enthralling story of Homo sapiens and other humans crossing the sea as they spread around the world, but I fear he may have fallen into the trap of assuming that prehistoric peoples were simpler than their descendants. Why should farmers have more advanced tools than hunter-gatherers? A hunter who might bag game …

Regarding your article "What makes a mind?", until recently it was thought that the life process originated as some kind of accident of thermodynamics, and that "agency" (and consciousness) arose as a by-product of this. But when, for example, I see a cat doing acrobatics on a garden fence, I know for certain that the …

As a keen long-distance cyclist, my experience (admittedly a single datum point) is that in the months when conditions allow plenty of long rides, my weight always drops by several kilograms. Unfortunately, outside those months, it creeps back up. Evidence that this isn't simply a seasonal effect comes from last summer, where multiple heatwaves meant …

As usual, I enjoyed Emily H. Wilson's review of the books Vigil and The Rainseekers . However, I don't generally find novellas or even short stories unsatisfying. Some of the most-praised science-fiction stories of all time, such as The War of the Worlds and The Day of the Triffids , are very slim volumes compared …

This latest attempt to link creativity with health, as discussed in "Want to stay healthy? Get creative", once again ignores the common denominator of all the other likely links, from exercise to the consumption of fermented foods: the richer you are, the more likely you are to engage in one or more of these healthy …

Regarding "Our universe's quantum secret", if a single quantum wave function is to be discovered, it may well take a massive amount of computer power. Perhaps as big as a planet (we could call it Earth). If such a wave function were to be determined, I am confident the solution would be 42 ( 7 …